Kram: A Tiny macOS Tool for Taming Chaotic Folders

Aditya Singh — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 19:22:51 +0000

I Built Kram: A File Organizer That Knows What Not to Touch

My Downloads folder had become a crime scene.

Hundreds of files. Random screenshots. ZIP archives. PDFs. DMGs. Old projects. Files I couldn't remember downloading.

So I built Kram, a macOS file organizer designed around one simple idea:

Automate the boring part without giving the automation permission to wreck your Mac.

https://github.com/adisng/Kram

What is Kram?

Kram is a lightweight, local-first file organization tool for macOS.

Give it a messy folder and it categorizes files into sensible folders based on their type.

For example:

Downloads/
├── Documents/
├── Images/
├── Videos/
├── Audio/
├── Archives/
├── Applications/
└── Other/

Instead of spending 20 minutes dragging files around, the goal is to let Kram handle it.

But file sorting isn't the interesting part

Moving files based on their extension is easy.

The difficult question is:

How do you automate file management without making users afraid to run the tool?

That's where Kram gets interesting.

Safety comes first

Kram is designed to work only with locations the user explicitly chooses.

It should not start wandering around macOS and deciding that some system file looks like it belongs in a folder called "Other."

The philosophy is:

User files → Kram can organize
System files → Leave them alone

The less surprising the automation is, the better.

Everything stays local

Kram doesn't need to upload your files to a server.

Your files stay on your Mac.

That matters because the folders you're organizing might contain invoices, personal photographs, source code, documents, or other files you probably don't want processed somewhere else.

CLI-first by design

I started Kram as a command-line tool rather than immediately building a GUI.

The core problem isn't the interface.

It's the organization engine.

Eventually, I'd like something as simple as:

kram ~/Downloads

And Kram handles the rest.

A CLI also opens the door to shell scripts, automation, scheduled jobs, and other developer workflows.

I want to test it against terrible folders

A perfectly clean test folder doesn't tell me much.

This does:

Downloads/
├── IMG_48291.JPG
├── final.pdf
├── final-final.pdf
├── setup.dmg
├── project.zip
├── random-file
├── Screenshot 2026-09-25.png
├── backup.tar.gz
├── something.mov
├── old-project/
├── random-folder/
└── ... thousands more files

That's the environment Kram needs to survive.

I'm particularly interested in testing:

Thousands of files
Duplicate filenames
Files without extensions
Unusual extensions
Hidden files
Nested directories
Spaces and special characters
Permission-restricted files
macOS-specific files
Mixed file types

Dry runs and reversibility

One feature I'm particularly interested in building is a proper dry-run mode.

Instead of immediately changing your filesystem:

Kram dry run

142 files found

Images      → 63
Documents   → 31
Videos      → 18
Archives    → 14
Audio       → 9
Other       → 7

No files changed.

You can inspect what Kram plans to do first.

From there, I'd like to add reliable operation logs and undo/rollback functionality.

Because "trust me, I sorted everything" isn't exactly a great UX for a file-management tool.

Where Kram could go

The current idea is intentionally small, but there are plenty of directions it could grow:

Dry-run mode
Undo / rollback
Custom organization rules
Duplicate detection
Automatic Downloads organization
Scheduled cleanup
File previews
Shell integration
Native macOS GUI

I don't want Kram to become another giant productivity suite.

I want it to do one thing extremely well:

Turn chaotic folders into organized folders without making the user nervous.

I need beta testers

This is where you come in.

If you use macOS, I'd love for you to throw your ugliest folder at Kram and see what happens.

GitHub:

[YOUR GITHUB REPO LINK]

If you test it, tell me:

Your macOS version
Approximately how many files you tested
What worked
What broke
What you expected to happen
What you'd like Kram to do next

I'm especially interested in bugs and edge cases.

A tool that works perfectly on 20 files isn't particularly impressive.

A tool that survives someone's 8,000-file Downloads folder?

Now we're talking.

Kram is still being built, and I'd rather find the weird edge cases now than after someone trusts it with their entire Downloads folder.

If you try it, break it. 🫡

DEV Community: Aditya Singh